RAW

Raw last night was pretty good, although solidifying some things I think we could have already seen coming.

For example, we knew pretty well Shawn Michaels would get the shot at the Undertaker, not Vladimir Kozlov.

We knew Randy Orton would choose to challenge Triple H for his title - I even suspected he might try to 'swerve' and choose someone else initially before picking H, which he ultimately did. Excellent mic work by H by the by, reminding us that he's 'not a nice guy'.

Jimmy Snuka was not a great participant as Chris Jericho's 'legend of the week' to beat up, but Jericho worked twice as hard to make it passable and did quite well I think. Great job and I'm interested to see who he ultimately ends up working with at the end of this angle.

Kane entering the Money in the Bank match is a surprise, I expected Rey Mysterio to win. Not necessarily an unpleasant surprise they always need one biggish guy who doesn't seem to belong, just a surprise.

I'm not thrilled they gave away the John Cena-Edge match. I'm hoping they go a different route now with WM since they just gave away what I expected to be one of the main events - I also hope that route isn't Big Show-Edge. I think that would be a bit of a clunker world title bout, with one of Mania's best streaks vs. one of its worst.

This Raw was not terrible nor great, which is OK with 4 weeks to go until Mania and a lot of time to build, and a lot already built, but not OK to sustain much longer. I know WWE clued in about a month to six weeks ago that this WM was becoming predictable and has been scrambling to make it more surprising, and that's great - but you also need a show to sell, especially one this big.

Unless they're thinking Mania's silver anniversary sells itself.

Bottom line: no complaints so far and I'm glad they've tried some new things. It's now time to lock in and cement some of the loose ends they've been chasing down. And I know some of those things, they're still working on negotation-wise (Mickey Rourke or Hulk Hogan, for example). And that's fine; we're just getting to the point now of confirm, or move on to Plan B. No complaints until now, but I expect to see some more concrete build in the next four weeks, to a strong finish in Houston at WM 25.